394 OX THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



Hence I feel firmly persuaded that Davila, or rather his fellow la- 

 bourer, Rome' de l'lsle, must have bestowed his attention on some 

 fragment of my gveatpdlceotkerium ■ his having fancied that these teeth 

 resembled those of Jussieu may be accounted for by the fact of the 

 deficiency of the drawings of the latter in size and accuracy. 



I presume the same to he the case with the bones of the hippopo- 

 tamus, which Lametnerie tells us were found at Mary near Meaux 

 (Theory of the Earth, v, p. 198), but the description of which he 

 does not give. The environs of Meaux are in a great measure gypseous, 

 and I know that the fossils yielded by them are similar to those of the 

 neighbourhood of S'aris. ■ 



Faujas himself had long before spoken of the teeth of the hippopo- 

 tamus. He thus expresses himself in a letter to Lametherie on the 

 bones found by M. de Fay, near Orleans, inserted in the Physical 

 Journal of December, 1794, p. 445. 



" Here are some of the details of the most marked characteristics 

 which I observed in the remains of the bones found in the quarries of 

 Montabusard. 



" 1st. The petrified tooth of an hippopotamus, weighing 8 ounces, 

 6 penny-weights, and 15 grains, although it. is not entire, for there is 

 a portion of it wanting at the extremity of the crown, &c. On com- 

 paring this tooth with those of the largest heads of the hippopotamus 

 in the Museum of Natural History, I have not found one approaching 

 this in size ; so that the animal to which this tooth belonged must have 

 been at least three times larger than the stuffed hippopotamus in the 

 gallery of the Museum, which came from the Museum of the Hague." 

 I have examined this tooth, and I am positive, as I have already 

 stated, that it belonged to a mastodon. 



But if it has happened that authors have sometimes passed off for 

 bones and teeth of the hippopotamus some pieces which did not belong 

 to that animal, it has also been the case that some authors have had 

 them without being aware of the circumstance, and have attributed 

 them to animals to which they did not belong. Among these we may 

 reckon Aldrovandus. In his work, De Metallicis, book 4, page 828, 

 he represents, plate 4, fig. 1, the real fossil molar of an hippopotamus, 

 the fourth or fifth upper half worn ; and in fig. 2 a posterior lower 

 tooth, very slightly worn ; plate 7 is, moreover, a fourth upper half, 

 worn and broken in front. He gives the whole three for elephants' 

 teeth, while the real molar of an elephant (represented in plate 9) is 

 supposed by him to be the production of some great animal unknown. 

 Aldrovandus may be excused, as he had no skeletons of these animals : 

 but as his figures are easily distinguishable, and, moreover, as large as 

 life, the error of his classification might have been easily rectified ; and 

 yet it is his testimony "alone, clear and positive as that testimony is, 

 which has been neglected by those who have enumerate, d the authorities 

 for the existence of the fossil bones of the hippopotamus. 



Aldrovandus does not speak of the origin of these fossils, but it is 

 probable that, like some of those I am about to describe, they came 

 from some of the vallies of Italy. They are at present preserved in 

 the Museum of the Institute of Bologna, where I have been able to 

 assure myself of the accuracy of the figures he has published. 



